Who Is Jimmy Choo?

By Phoebe Eaton

Published: December 1, 2002

Beneath the blaze of the carefully placed umbrella heaters, in the muted glow cast by a string of Chinese lanterns, a single cappuccino-colored ponytail whipped from side to side as Tamara Mellon, the 33-year-old president of Jimmy Choo shoes, planted her 26th double-cheek kiss.

There were now seemingly as many photographers as guests on the patio at the Buffalo Club in Santa Monica, Calif., and every time one of their number snapped the pink-cheeked hostess in her black-velvet ribboned breeches and corset-cleavaged Yves Saint Laurent blouse, Mellon tilted her head coquettishly over one shoulder, hitched a hip back in the Moll Flanders manner, shot a well-turned ankle toward the camera and positioned her perfectly pedicured foot just so.

Mellon was throwing this party to celebrate the opening of Jimmy Choo's sixth store in America. The London-based chain had just notched a space in one of the most profitable malls in the country, Costa Mesa's South Coast Plaza, a bus stop for Japanese tourists combing the California littoral for brand-label clothing like Jimmy Choo shoes, the most popular footwear at the Oscars.

For years, Manolo Blahnik, the other British shoe designer with a ponytail, stood taller than his colleagues, mainly because of his own unwavering affection for the stiletto heel, an engineering feat the diameter of a thumbtack and fetishized by men and women alike. Blahnik remains the visionary against whom all other high-end shoemakers are judged. But lately, Mellon, a former It Girl from Britain, has been drumming her way into the frontal lobes of those who would spend $450 on a pair of Manolos by pitching her just-as-expensive Jimmy Choos as ''a younger looking shoe.'' In the worldview she is selling, Manolos are for Mrs. X, the Mommy Dearest who guest-stars in the best-selling ''Nanny Diaries,'' a witch on heels who organizes her panties in Ziploc bags. Choos are for the boot-loving Sara Ludlow, the ''hottest girl'' in Nick McDonell's new book ''Twelve,'' a private-school purebred with a Nokia cellphone stuffed in her Prada bag. When George W. Bush was inaugurated, his 19-year-old twins, Barbara and Jenna, requested Jimmy Choo cashmere stiletto boots. Their dressmaker, Lela Rose, patiently explained that the girls didn't want to look like their mother.

It's a high-stepping public profile for a company founded just six years ago, one that was almost tripped up at the gate by an old-fashioned family feud. On one side stood Tamara Mellon (the Face) and Mellon's publicity-minded entrepreneur father, Tom Yeardye (the Money). On the other was the outwardly meek Malaysian shoemaker, Jimmy Choo (the Name), and his ambitious apprentice niece, Sandra Choi (the Talent). In the haze of accusations and remonstration among all these characters over who, exactly, should get the Credit, there lies the inevitable question: Who is the real Jimmy Choo? It's a long story.

The Making of the Money

Perhaps it's best to begin in the dyspeptic belly of the Queen Mary. It was 1949, and Tom Yeardye, a North Londoner who worked in the ship's engine room, realized that there was better food in the officers' mess because it came from the American side of the boat's Southampton-New York route. He had a sense that his future lay in America, but immigration laws blocked his escape. After his tour of duty ended, Yeardye found work in London's Pinewood Studios, where, he says, ''If you looked like Rock Hudson or Gregory Peck from a distance, they paid a lot of money.'' But mainly Yeardye worked as Victor Mature's body double.

Yeardye's name first made it into the newspapers when he broke up the marriage of Diana Dors. Known as the British Marilyn Monroe, Dors was the kind of woman who went grocery-shopping in marabou mules. After Dors moved on to her next conquest, Yeardye opened a restaurant in London called the Paint Box, where the diners could sketch nude models, and then a nightclub, Le Condor, where a young Engelbert Humperdinck (then called Gerry Dorsey) sang in a band. Yeardye was investing in real estate when he married Tamara's mother, Anne Davies, a model who was the face of Chanel No. 5.

One day, Davies came home from a job carrying a new product, hot curlers. Yeardye traveled to Denmark and bought the U.S. license from its isolated inventor. Carmen Curlers were a huge hit for Saks Fifth Avenue, and in 1966, Clairol bought Yeardye out for $1 million, making him a rich man. When a friend from his swinging London days named Vidal Sassoon announced that he was relocating to Beverly Hills and asked Yeardye to help him create a worldwide business, Yeardye finally made his move to America. His young family -- Tamara had arrived in 1969 -- bought a house on Whittier Drive in Beverly Hills, next door to Nancy Sinatra.

The Making of the Face

Little Tamara was enrolled at El Rodeo, but her mother switched her into a Catholic school because she was spending too much time on the phone with her friends chattering about Gucci belts. When Tamara later expressed interest in attending Beverly Hills High School, she was packed off to Heathfield, the sister school to Eton. Tamara left Heathfield at 16, typical for women who weren't on the university track, and enrolled at the same finishing school outside Gstaad that Princess Diana attended. She learned how to speak French, set a table and address people who have titles. ''What they were doing was preparing you to be a wife and come back and marry whomever and run the estate,'' she says evenly.

Tamara liked finishing school. But she was eager to work. ''At the end of the day, the person with the money is the person with the control,'' she says, like a person with money. There was a year-and-a-half stint as a shop assistant in the Alaïa department at Brown's (where she spent more money than she made), a quick spin through fashion P.R. and a spot at Mirabella magazine calling in accessories. When Mirabella folded, she asked her father to revive it, but he declined. ''If Rupert Murdoch can't make money on it, I sure can't make money on it,'' he remembers saying.

Tamara consoled herself with a job at British Vogue. It was there that she first became acquainted with the work of Jimmy Choo.

A Good Name Is Hard to Find

In Malaysia, Jimmy Choo's father was a shoemaker, but Jimmy decided to refine his own skills at Cordwainers College in London in the early 1980's. His first label, Lucky Shoes, was sold out of a stall in a market on the South Bank, but by 1986, he'd set up his own custom business in a Dickensian former hospital in Hackney, where other bohemian craftsmen like Alexander McQueen were also in residence.

At that time in London, there was an unspoken rule that the shoes should always match the dress. Between the staid ribbon-cuttings and three-nights-a-week galas she was attending in her beaded pastel Catherine Walker gowns, Diana, Princess of Wales, found that she needed more attention to her feet than a reflexologist could offer. As a royal, she was obliged to use a British designer, and she stumbled across Choo, who was making shoes to match clothes for the British fashion magazines. Phobic about gossip, Diana found Jimmy quiet, unassuming and at some remove from her own social milieu.

Choo would visit Diana at Kensington Palace, and young Prince Harry would carry Choo's heavy suitcase full of samples back to the car. Now that he was cobbling for the most famous woman in the world, business started to bustle. Choo was also creating shoes for twice-yearly runway shows, and the workload was stupendous. He needed help. In 1989, he was joined at home and in the workshop by his niece, Sandra Choi.

The Hidden Talent

Sandra Choi's father -- Jimmy's brother-in-law -- owned a Chinese restaurant on the Isle of Wight in England. Shortly after Sandra was born, she was left with her grandparents in Hong Kong, where she grew into an Adidas-obsessed teenager who shaved the sides of her head and skipped school. There was makeup, there were Dr. Martens and there were boys. She had started to smoke and was ''experimenting with things,'' she says. Her grandparents dispatched her to the Isle of Wight at the age of 13, and she was promptly deposited in a convent school by her parents. At 17, she ran away to London, moving in with her Uncle Jimmy. She finished up high school on the East End, and then applied to Central Saint Martins, the famous art and design college attended by John Galliano and Stella McCartney; she'd read about it in Jimmy's fashion magazines.

Choi set out to study clothes -- not shoes -- but she also worked for Jimmy, booking appointments, handling magazine folk and cutting and stitching shoes on his production line. It was a taxing schedule, and after a year, she dropped out of school and went to work for her uncle full time.

The label was popular, but not well capitalized, and that meant business was not as good as it looked. ''To make shoes in England is not easy,'' Choi says. ''We are isolated from components. There are no beautiful heels. There are no beautiful lasts. There is no beautiful leather. It's all in Italy.'' So they would improvise, creating interesting toe shapes, she says, ''using the filler you'd use to fix your car.''

Money Talks (and the Talent Walks)

By this point, Mellon had quit Vogue and was casting around to start her own business. She approached the pair about starting a shoe label that would be sold in stores. ''Jimmy Choo was just a great name for shoes,'' Mellon remembers thinking.

Jimmy and his niece were astonished by her interest. ''We turned to Tamara and said to her, nicely, that maybe she should experience what it's like to work in the shoe industry,'' Choi says. For three months, Mellon reported for work in Levi's and a T-shirt and answered the phones upstairs. These were the days ''before Tamara was dressing in head-to-toe mink, you know, diamonds dripping,'' Choi adds.

''I remember thinking, Oh, God, a rich girl getting into the business,'' Choi continues. ''What happens if she doesn't do anything? She was like a little robin.'' Mellon was surprised by how messy and labor-intensive the work was, Choi says. But she remained interested and a deal was struck with Jimmy in May 1996. Tom Yeardye was induced to finance the entire operation himself at first. ''I spent a fortune buying shoes for Tamara and her mother,'' he recalls. ''I would say, 'We've got to get into this business one of these days,' in jocular fashion.''

A store was leased near Harvey Nichols. Choo flew his feng shui master in from Malaysia, who instructed him to make sure the cash register faced away from the door so all the money wouldn't wander out.

From the outset, there were problems. ''The original idea was for Jimmy to design the collection, and I would find the factories, produce the shoes in volume, open stores, sell the collection to wholesale clients and handle the P.R.,'' Mellon says. ''But we realized early on that there's a big difference between making a pair of shoes and designing a full collection. You have to predict trends. You have to sketch probably over 100 shoes.'

But Choo, who had a family to support, was continuing his couture business, as it provided a steady income. Although he had an equity stake in the ready-to-wear business, he wasn't drawing a salary. In any case, Choo was accustomed to making a single pair at a time for customers who mainly picked what they wanted from pre-existing samples. The thought of expanding his repertoire seemed to overwhelm him.

''He is a cobbler,'' Mellon says flatly.

Worried that the Yeardyes were going to sue the family if Choo failed to produce a full line, Choi hurtled into the void, sketching a collection of 30 shoes that at first contained only about six or seven stilettos. As it turned out, she was good at it. She had a surprising knack for creating the sort of original shoes that would appeal to the sort of women Mellon calls ''the opinion leaders.'' Mellon started making deals with Italian factories so they could increase the collection to a more marketable size. But Choi was showing the strain. After finishing up at the store, where she and Mellon handled all operations late into the night from the basement and sometimes waited on the customers themselves, Choi would head back to Hackney and work with her uncle on his custom shoes, occasionally until 3 in the morning. ''My life was tearing in half,'' she says.

From the outside, the operation seemed positively genteel. The shoes generated reams of press as the girls played official farrier to Hollywood, taking a suite at L'Ermitage to dress the Oscar bound and producing a million-dollar sandal strung with diamonds for Vogue. Choo became upset that all the articles were suddenly about Mellon, who was retailing her $1 million wedding at Blenheim Palace to an heir of the American Mellon fortune and who, by all appearances, was running the entire company. Choo also felt he deserved royalties from the sale of the storefront shoes.

Sandra Choi was chafing from the friction between the Yeardyes and her own baffled clan. ''Words were thrown within the family backward and forward,'' Choi says. In February 1997, Sandra Choi ''left Jimmy,'' she says with a great deal of meaning, and for a time moved in with Mellon, taking over an entire floor of her town house.

Around this time, Diana had procured a divorce and was therefore commanded to appear at fewer events in custom-colored shoes. She would show up at the girls' store on Saturday mornings, where she would park on the yellow line outside and complain about all the tickets she was getting.

In 2000, Jimmy Choo was named Accessory Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council, an award based on the votes of 1,000 people in the fashion business. Mellon had lobbied strenuously to replace Choo on stage at the televised event. But Choo had hired his own publicist -- and lawyer -- at this point, and he prevailed with his argument that he already had a name in the business before Mellon was on the scene and that it is common for a fashion designer to employ design teams.

That is certainly true at big fashion houses, where designers often sign off on other people's work. But it's a different story at most high-end shoe houses, where people like Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin and Pierre Hardy design a shoe personally and their names appear on it.

''People didn't understand the difference between the custom business and what's in all our shops,'' Mellon says, exasperated. ''And anyway, it's not the name that makes the product but the product that makes the name.''

Both Mellon and Choo now badly wanted out of their relationship. Finally, in November 2001, Choo was bought out of the company for $10.6 million by Equinox Luxury Holdings, backed by Phoenix Equity Partners, a billion-dollar venture capital firm now bankrolling the company's expansion. Twenty-five more stores are slated to open in the next five years. Equinox, which took a 51 percent stake in the company, is run by Robert Bensoussan, 44, a former LVMH executive.

Bensoussan is now the C.E.O. of Jimmy Choo Ltd., and Tom Yeardye is chairman. On Bensoussan's desk sits a bead-encrusted scarlet pump commemorating the sale. Jimmy Choo was allowed to continue his small couture business and handed a licensing deal that comes up for review in 2004. Depending on the outcome of that, the possibility exists that Jimmy Choo could lose the right to use his own name.

The Face Takes Her Place

After the widely publicized sale to Equinox, many in the fashion business were still puzzling over who, exactly, was designing the shoes -- the ones now being talked about on ''The Sopranos'' and ''Sex and the City.''

Mellon's publicists have been known to tell people that the shoes are designed by her and not by Sandra Choi. They compare Mellon to Tom Ford at Yves Saint Laurent and John Galliano at Christian Dior, because they know it can help the image of a design house if the designer interests people. Mellon has the looks and the society laurels, and she spookily embodies the demographic of this product. But does she design the shoes?

''It's quite funny to see the contrast between Tamara and me, isn't it?'' Sandra Choi is saying. ''I'm like a girly, just kind of like whatever, but she's oh so properly dressed up like a doll.''

Choi, 30, is sitting in the showroom surrounded by the entire spring-summer collection. As the company's creative director, Sandra Choi has a lot to say about what comes out of this workshop. When asked about the division of labor, Tamara Mellon describes it this way: ''She is the architect, and I am the interior designer. She sits down and sketches the structure of the shoe, the bones of it. And then I'll come in, and we'll say: Right. I think that shoe should be in red kid.''

When she has time, Mellon attends the important fabric shows in Italy and collaborates on the ornamentation. She also monitors the fashion collections so the pair will know when the hippie-cowboy look is riding the runways. Choi spends a lot of time making sure the factories are doing what they're supposed to. Mellon will notice there's a lot of yellow on the catwalks, for example, so she'll increase the yellow shoes in the stores.

Choi says it helps having Mellon there to rule on styles, because she sees her as the customer. A company mantra is that these are women designing for other women. (Traditionally, there have been more male designers in this business, in part because making shoes by hand requires arm strength to stretch a leather upper; Choi admits this is the one part of the process she can't master.) And so their open-toe shoes are stuffed with comfort in mind; there is extra padding where the ball of the foot rests. An informal Mr. Whipple-style test conducted on other brands in the fabled Neiman Marcus shoe department indicated that this padding was unique, though fans of the shoe say the pad flattens out in three days.

Choi used to tell reporters that the four-inch heel was only good for about four hours of wear. Mellon has now banned her from saying that. Still, Choi says, ''it's the truth.''

Choi is wearing the same style of Cartier watch Tamara used to wear before her husband gave her the $21,800 version with the diamond bezel as a birthday present. Both women like to wear a pointy stiletto from the fall collection known as Savage. But the two, who were thrown together by stressful circumstance, now lead increasingly independent lives. ''Otherwise, I don't think we'd be able to breathe,'' Choi says.

Jimmy Who?

As Mellon and Choi have grown bolder, making public statements that their only competition is Manolo Blahnik, they have earned the scorn of some in the fashion world for presuming to place themselves in the same league.

Blahnik, 60, is increasingly annoyed by the presence of this brand and its celebrity-chasing ways, admits George Malkemus, president of Manolo Blahnik U.S.A. According to a friend of Blahnik's, his grudge dates back to the days of the Hackney workshop, which he believes occasionally copied elements of his shoes for the magazines. Blahnik and others in the industry think they see echoes of ancient Manolos in some of the girls' shoes. ''In the footwear industry, everybody and their cousin makes the claim that they've been copied,'' says Michael Atmore, the editorial director of Footwear News. ''This is an industry full of knock-offs and slight variations of ideas, and it is impossible to trace who actually had the idea first.'' The topography of a shoe is so limited that there are only a few points of distinction -- heel height and shape being one of them. Shoe designers are especially protective of those elements. Blahnik has lined his London store window with a fine layer of chicken wire to thwart the cameras of would-be copycats.

When charges that Choo had co-opted some of Blahnik's designs came up in a conversation, Mellon groaned and discussed what she feels is a hurtful whisper campaign orchestrated by Blahnik and his employees. ''I think it is quite insulting because we very much do our own thing,'' she said indignantly. ''Our styles are very different.'' There's also the argument that the big-city sophisticates who buy these shoes are familiar with both lines and would never tolerate copies. Sandra Choi says she sometimes looks at Blahnik's shoes specifically so she won't be accused of ripping him off. She says her heel shapes are ''slicker'' and ''Mr. Blahnik's are curly whirly.'' Asked to explain the latter, she references a British industry description for a heel with a slightly flared base: ''You know, toilet shaped.''

A factory owner outside of Florence who handles half of Jimmy Choo's production says that a Manolo Blahnik representative recently called to ask if he could make shoes for Blahnik. (Over the last decade, Blahnik has expanded his production, releasing a more commercial line of reissued classics in the states.) Mellon says: ''If I called his factory, he would flip out. It's a confidentiality issue. You don't want people knowing anything about your business.'' The majors rarely share factories. Mellon says she believes Blahnik was ''trying to push us out.'' (Malkemus denies the factory was contacted.)

Some have suggested that Neiman Marcus has been pressured not to carry Jimmy Choos by Blahnik, who does big business there. In New York, Manolos are carried alongside Choos at Bergdorf Goodman, and this does rankle Blahnik, Malkemus says.

Blahnik has many fans in the business. Michael Atmore says that ''there's a level of refinement in his shoes that does set Manolo Blahnik apart.'' Some in the shoe trade think that there's more talk from the Jimmy Choo side about Manolo Blahnik than vice versa and that Jimmy Choo is actually trading on this pairing. Or as Malkemus puts it: ''When you're selling a copy at $49, that's one thing. But when you're selling lesser workmanship at the same price, it's so irritating. This is 30 years of Manolo's blood, sweat and tears.''

When asked about Mellon and Jimmy Choo shoes -- which he is frequently -- Blahnik has been known to respond, ''Jimmy who?

And They All

Lived Happily Ever After

On the pale blue business card, Dato Professor Jimmy Choo (as he now calls himself) appears to be rehearsing a swirly new logo -- for ''JC Couture.''

We are standing inside Jimmy Choo's workshop, now located in a section of central London scattered with Turkish cafes. Choo, who is wearing a neat blue oxford shirt and a spiffy overcoat, tells me that since the buyout, he has time to lecture at Cordwainers. Choo is now the most famous Malaysian after the Bond girl Michelle Yeoh. In 2000, the sultan of Pahang named the shoe designer a dato, the local equivalent of a peerage.

Choo occupies the first floor of what a real-estate broker might call a gracious town house. The shop is obstinately underdone, the carpet industrial grade, and the cheap desk in the back looks like someone went at it with a letter opener. But this is an appointment-only business, and Choo doesn't have to seize the attention of the odd pedestrian. Samples on the wall show some wear and seem unremarkable, if high quality, many featuring mother-of-the bride-style beading. He shows off one pair studded with shards of crystal -- rose quartz for love and green quartz for calm.

The shop is suffused with strong fumes; it is the glue being used downstairs, in the basement.

Choo says that he can make five pairs of shoes a week, each bearing the legend ''hand made'' on the sole. ''People who send their work off to Italy . . . it's not as good,'' he observes, his eyes dropping to the floor. Choo says that he knows he's lucky to have retained his name. He attributes this to ''good karma.''

Since the troubles, Jimmy Choo has become increasingly enamored of Wong Chee Yew, a Malaysian feng shui expert he calls his master. About six years ago, he asked his master to give him a gift. Choo says he can now read auras. He places two fingers on my forehead for a minute of chanting, exorcising the bad vibes with a sudden whoosh toward the door. A pair of Chinese lions atop the mantel were a decorating tip from his master: they protect him from evil.

Choo and Sandra Choi are speaking again. But it hurts, she says, when she thinks of the effort she put into building the company and how Choo was polite as he could be to the Yeardye family while totally ignoring her. Choi added that after Choo's name won household currency, he became fixated on parties. He asks if I will be attending the Versace opening at the Victoria and Albert Museum the following evening, noting with regret that he won't be there.

''He's made an awful lot of money, many millions,'' Tom Yeardye offers.''He's his own boss. He doesn't have to come in and argue with me and Tamara. He's a big wheel in Malaysia. I think Jimmy is very happy with how it worked out with us.''

Photos: Tamara Mellon, the Face (bottom left, hands on hips, and right, smoking), shows off Jimmy Choo shoes in their natural Hollywood habitat. (Lauren Greenfield)(VII Photo Agency); Jimmy Choo, the Name, in his London atelier.; The Face and the Talent, Sandra Choi, at a Choo salon. (Stephen Gill for The New York Times)

Phoebe Eaton is a former deputy editor at Talk. This is her first article for The Times Magazine.